Believe it or not, who pays for the work is irrelevant to copyright ownership. Still, many people believe that if you "hire" someone to do work for you, you will own it, probably because of the "work-made-for-hire" doctrine in the copyright law. Unfortunately, this name is very misleading. Just hiring a person is not enough to make a copyright belong to someone other than the author of a work. Here's how it really works:

• Employee working within scope of employment: If you are an employee and the work you are doing is within the scope of your employment, your employer will own the work and be considered the author of the work for copyright purposes; or
  
  
• Work made for hire: If you are hired to create something and you and the person hiring you sign a written contract before you get started that states that what you are about to do is a "work made for hire" and, in fact, the work fits into one of the following categories, it will be considered a work made for hire:
  • contribution to a collective work
  • part of a movie or other audiovisual work
  • a translation
  • a supplementary work
  • a compilation
  • an instructional text
  • a test
  • answer material for a test, or
  • an atlas

  If it meets all these requirements, it will be owned by the person hiring you and he or she will be considered the author of the work for copyright purposes.